Chatsworth Companies Regroup After Devastating Fire

While the building that housed their direct mailing, printing and political consulting companies burned down the day after elections, brothers Fred and Garry Thomas said their three businesses are alive and well. The 50 employees of consulting firm Aaron, Thomas and Associates, Engage Marketing, a direct and digital mailing company, and Coronet Printing have found a temporary location on Variel Avenue in Chatsworth. The Thomas brothers leased the space while they secure a permanent location. “Our team is in great spirits,” said Garry Thomas, owner and senior vice president of the corporation. “We just moved right on; all we lost was some property, we didn’t lose our business.” A fire that started around 6 p.m. Nov. 3 engulfed the Victory Building at 9260 Owensmouth Ave. in Chatsworth, which had housed the businesses for more than 13 years. It took 200 firefighters and nearly five hours to put the fire out at the 16,500-square-foot building. The fire left an estimated $7 million in damages, according to Thomas. The cause of the fire has not been determined. The 25 year-old businesses had just completed a record breaking election season, designing, printing and mailing more than 40 million pieces of mail in the last two months. “It was our biggest season ever,” said Thomas. The companies produced direct mail for the propositions on the Nov. 2 ballot in California and also produced political mailers distributed in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Washington. Prior to the elections, additional staff was brought onboard to handle the demand, and about 120 to150 people were working 16 hour shifts at any given time in the building. “If this had happened two weeks ago this could have been much more devastating,” said Thomas. So far, local community support has been extraordinary, according to Thomas who said local businesses have offered space for them to use temporarily and have even offered their employees temporary jobs, should they need them. “The Marriot has offered to hire some of our employees, and Westfield Topanga offered space for us to use as a temporary location,” Thomas said. “People have been amazing. That’s why it doesn’t hurt at all, nobody is sitting around depressed. [The community support] makes it feel a lot better.” The Thomas brothers are also seeing opportunity in this crisis. The companies had outgrown the space they had been in for more than a decade and favorable real estate market conditions now provide an opportunity for the company to get a bigger and better place. “It’s an opportunity to go find exactly what we want,” said Thomas. “Inventory is good, there are a lot of choices, and Chatsworth was recently named an enterprise zone which provides a number of incentives towards purchases.” Thomas said they are open to both leasing and purchasing a space, depending on what opportunities they find. As for their clientele, Thomas said he was not worried about losing business. “Our client base is also a very loyal group, they have been with us for most of our existence, so we shouldn’t loose any business from this, we hope.”